A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Have you ever wondered what happens when someone shifts from activism to introspection, from fighting external battles to confronting internal truths? This deeply personal episode unveils the story behind the Healthy Living Podcast and the transformative journey that brought it into existence.
After dedicating years to cannabis advocacy and witnessing the fragility of community support, I found myself at a crossroads. Plant medicine experiences opened my eyes to deeper truths about relationships, integrity, and personal health. Simultaneously, a weight loss journey was transforming my physical body. These parallel paths converged into a vision for something new: a platform where diverse voices could share health wisdom without rigid dogma or commercial agendas.
What makes this podcast unique is its unwavering commitment to truth-seeking rather than truth-claiming. The health world overflows with absolute statements and miracle promises, yet my experience—especially following my cancer diagnosis—has taught me that health truths are deeply personal and contextual. By featuring guests with varying perspectives, from scientific researchers to energy healers, the podcast creates a tapestry of information from which listeners can discern their own path. The community forming around these conversations stands in stark contrast to my previous experiences—it's built on vulnerability, mutual support, and authentic connection rather than drama and self-interest. Whether you're listening, subscribing to support our work, or considering sharing your own story as a guest, you're participating in a collective healing journey that honors the complexity of human health. What truth might you discover by joining us?
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to talk about the podcast itself, and we're almost two and a half years into it, and I wanted to go back to the beginning and talk about how this thing got started and where it's headed, and a little bit about me, the host and some of the guests, and really a lot of people are unaware of the significance of this podcast, or at least what the significance could be, and I just thought it would be a good not going to be a real long episode, but we'll just get into it a little bit. And so, about two and a half years ago, I realized I was entering a transition in my life and coming from many, many years of a cannabis advocate and activist and all of the heartbreak and grief that that brought into my life, and I realized that this whole cannabis world was not all it was cracked up to be, and I began seeking the truth about things and started working with plant medicines. This has actually gone back about 10 years and I began a journey working with peyote and other plant medicines. That started opening my eyes to things about people, myself mostly myself relationships and truth became more and more important. And you know I was doing this other podcast called Cup of Joe. I've done that, for I did that for over 10 years and I watched, you know, an effort of trying to make the world a better place and supporting people that needed it and all of this. And you know, as long as people were getting something directly from it, they'd be supportive. But support falls off real quick as soon as somebody else isn't benefiting. And I realized that at one point and as my nonprofit, the human solution was basically crumbling down because of just lack of support. Yeah, I started getting some truths, some eye-opening experiences, and so at one point I realized you know what I'm going to do, a different kind of a podcast.
Speaker 1:
And you know, the Cup of Joe was always about building community around the solidarity of people that were persecuted by cannabis prohibition. And I always said from the beginning, it wasn't even about the plant, it was just about freedom. For me, I'm about freedom. And then I realized it's more than freedom, I'm about freedom and the truth. And then I thought about this and know, seven years ago I began this weight loss journey and and really dramatically changed my life.
Speaker 1:
All of these things are sort of happening at once, and out of the old community, I started seeing a new community forming and different people and different quality of people, frankly, and people that had integrity that the old people didn't have, less drama, less problems and more solutions and I thought, wow, okay, we need to cultivate this. And I thought, well, maybe this podcast would be a way to do that. And so I just got started, like I do and you know, asked somebody who knew how to do this to help set it up, and they got me onto a platform. And it's funny because for a while, you know, they were helping, a couple of people were helping me and it just seemed like it was pulling teeth. Every time I gave a recording to somebody to go and upload it on the website, there was days it took to get it done and and always a problem uploading it. Finally, I'm like, whatever, I'm gonna figure this out myself turned out it was nothing and it was easier than I thought and I've been doing it ever since. And I thought to myself you've been doing it ever since.
Speaker 1:
And I thought to myself, you know where do we start? What do we start talking about? And I just said, well, anything that has to do with health. And so we started bringing in guests and I just started asking you know people I knew and you know. Dr Denise Canton was my first guest and somebody who shared a lot of experience with in the cannabis world and she's a osteopath. I thought she'd be make a perfect. Actually, liz McDuffie was my first guest, but she decided she didn't want it to be published, so we we never did, actually haven't gone back to her. Liz, I, when you're listening, I hope one day you decide to do an episode with me, because we do have so much to talk about.
Speaker 1:
Anyways, I started bringing in guests and we just started talking and had a pretty wide variety of guests and different people talking about science and people talking about Reiki and people talking about you know, just different things. And then over time, I thought about it and I was like well, I'm always trying to bring out other people's point of view and I said but I've got a pretty strong point of view and at one point I introduced myself as a guest. I said, well, this opens the door to talk about anything I want, as well as tying things together, excuse me and I thought that was going to be a good piece of the puzzle, and so that opened up a lot and created a place for me to create more content and really get into some of these discussions. And now, when we're talking about the truth and we're talking about healthy living, I want to be really, really, really clear. I am actually talking about the truth, so this podcast is never directed towards a product or service or you know.
Speaker 1:
I'm never going to tell you to go anywhere to do anything. What I'm going to tell you to do is judge for yourself, and, and as I'm learning about truths, I'm learning that there's no very few, just hard, fast truths. Mostly truths apply to an individual and their circumstance and everybody else in their own way, and the health industry and the health world has been rife with fraud and manipulation and hucksters and every kind of problem, because people want to be healthy, and there's been millions, dozens, hundreds, thousands probably of movies written about it and all the different snake oil scams. And you know, one thing I can say is use discernment, use your own experience, and, if you have the ability, there's a book that I would highly encourage you to read or listen to, and it's called the Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn and this is I'm not quite finished with it, but just the gist of it and the way it's brought about. It really gets into truths and what that means.
Speaker 1:
And, frankly, anybody who is adamant about a truth or a solution and they're trying to sell you a thing or tell you that this is what you need to do, it's this thing, they're probably full of shit. They may be misguided, they may be just wrong. They may, more often than not, I think, people have an experience and it happens to them, or they see it happen to somebody else and they extrapolate that from from that that if it happened, it will happen again, and that is so far from reality. Things happen to individuals. Um, there's anomalies, there's all these different things that happen and then we or even you know correlation, being misconfused with causality. It happens all the time.
Speaker 1:
So you know, I make natural products. I've been doing that for a long time and I've had people go oh well, I took your capsule and it gave me diarrhea and I'm like really, my capsule gave you diarrhea. That's funny because in the years and years of all the people taking my capsules including myself I'd never once heard about that. So why don't you tell me about what you did earlier in the day. Oh well, you know, I was out drinking last night and then I woke up and, you know, drank a little more and then ended up having a greasy cheeseburger, uh, for for lunch. And then, you know, and and I was like, oh, but my pill gave you diarrhea, okay, cool, and and this is a thing that happens all the time, and I realized that things just aren't so darn cut and dry.
Speaker 1:
So if you listen and look at the wide variety of guests, as the show's gotten a little more popular, I have more and more guests that come and find me and I bring on all kinds of people people that have businesses, people that have. Some of these people are pretty friends. They're talking about things that make no sense. Some people are adamant about published studies are the only way to get information, and my experience says that there's bits and pieces from everybody that can bring truth. And again, who's truth? In reference to what? In what lens is it being looked through? And this book that I was talking about really gets into those things and how we judge things. Anybody who judges a thing, I guarantee you, is not looking through the eyes of truth unless your judgment acknowledges the different possibilities or how it might impact somebody.
Speaker 1:
So, as I'm growing and learning all of these things and going through my own transformation and that's another thing People that say I can help you, I'm going to help you, I can do this for you the real truth is, the only person that can really help you is you, and that's really what this show is about. I want you to get a wide variety of information and, frankly, there's going to be some bullshit that comes into this show, but I hope that there's enough truth that resonates through here that you're like oh wow, that guy's way off base, or maybe that doesn't apply to me, guy's way off base, or maybe that doesn't apply to me. I think, having enough points of view, enough voices, all with this common thread, you start to see patterns, you start to see things, you start to see the forest for the trees and I think that that's really a big part of this. And, most importantly, since I was a kid, I've been trying to build a strong community.
Speaker 1:
I grew up with a big Catholic family, italian and, you know, love my family, but you know, frankly, for the size of it, we're not that close. I'm not that close to them, most of them. There's a handful of my family, that we stay connected and all of that, and I love them and you know I love my whole family. That's not the issue. But you know your family is really who you choose to spend your time with and that's where truths start to come in.
Speaker 1:
You know we make excuses. I make excuses for all kinds of things because I'm the eternal optimist and I want everything to be good and I want people to be their potential. But when you start getting honest and truthful about things, all of a sudden attention and action becomes truth and words become possibilities. And if you stop and think about that and you start being honest, you probably have a lot of people in your life that really aren't that into you and you make excuses for them. Oh, I know this person and and I think this person's important, so I'm gonna justify that I'm their friend. But the truth is, when actions really get involved, you start to recognize and you start to take these filters out and it becomes really apparent who's into you and who's not. And if it's more work to build or maintain a relationship than you feel it ought to be, well, it probably is, and if you feel a little stung because that person didn't respond well, they probably aren't into you and we don't want to hear it. We don't want to feel it. But if you get honest, all of a sudden things start changing your perspective and outlook and where you spend your attention starts to change, and I know it happened to me at one point.
Speaker 1:
You know I talked a little bit about this experience where my most recent journey began with a combo session and my eyes opened up to all these things that I was holding on to and I began purging, purging. I purged my whole business, I purged my people, I purged huge amounts of resources that I thought were important and just started getting rid of stuff. And it was the craziest thing because in its place just started coming all these most beautiful people and opportunities and awareness and I started working on myself deeper and deeper and through all of this, I get diagnosed with fucking cancer and boom, everything changes. All my priorities have changed and all the different things that are important, and all of a sudden the truth starts coming more and more clear. And this podcast has gotten even more amazing, and so we launched a whole section on overcoming cancer and other obstacles, and I chose to take the truth of my experience and teach people how to find their own truth, and that's really, I think, where it's evolved to. And so we now have an amazing, beautiful community, and I know some of you that are listening, maybe for the first time.
Speaker 1:
I want you to know what this is about, and it's not just me blathering on about things I think are important or trying to get you to think a certain way or do a certain thing. What I want you to do is start to look at yourself and prioritize. Figure out what is it that you really want. Why are you here? Maybe you found this on accident and maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe I'm talking to you directly. I don't know. I just know that I'm driven to have this conversation and I believe it helps people, and it certainly helps me to clarify my thoughts, and maybe that's the only reason I do it. I don't know, but I really know that this community is growing now and the wealth of knowledge and the understanding that I've received from this.
Speaker 1:
From October 14th, when I was first diagnosed, I didn't know. I thought I knew about cancer because I helped people for 30 years providing cannabis oil and the things that I thought I knew about cancer because I helped people for 30 years providing cannabis oil and and the things that I thought I knew. Oh, my god, did I thought I knew? I thought I knew a lot of stuff and I I witnessed things and I made it.
Speaker 1:
I made excuses for things and I looked at things in a light that that reflected what I wanted to see, and and I found things in data that supported my beliefs and I didn't look for things that opposed them. I didn't do any research to try to find contraindications and problems with my work. I just was always looking for things to validate and because of that, I held certain things to be self-evident and they weren't, and I've come to find out, through some rigorous research and trials and errors, that things are not always what they're cracked up to be, and I'm not to say that these miracles don't happen, and many, many, many people, including myself, have been healed by this. But that doesn't mean everything is for everybody and it doesn't mean things that are really good for you can't cause problems, and I think that's where the real truths come in. I see people doing extreme actions and I am certainly one of them and you know, I just recently found out as a result of my fasting that I was depriving myself of a key nutrient that was locking out my immune system's ability to see this cancer, and all the work I've done with oxidative therapy and all the fasting and everything, and if I was to go forward with this chemo that I was about tomorrow to begin, it wouldn't have worked right Because I was deficient in a mineral and because of the diligence and all the different people I was talking to and listening to and keying in on my own body and receiving discernment, I got this information and it's been transformative and I believe now I have the tools in place to reverse this thing quickly and I'm so looking forward to to watching this happen.
Speaker 1:
There's two places that you can get value from this podcast. One is just listening to it and you know, look through. There's there's 170 episodes and there's probably something for everybody. I recently upgraded some tools that are going to allow for bookmarking and better annotation, and so for people to find a good thing that they're looking for it's going to be easier and easier. I've also, within the last six months, added a bunch of subscriber content, and that's where we just go deep and get more real and more painfully truthful about things, more raw, and it's also a way for people to show support for the community and it's how this podcast pays for itself.
Speaker 1:
Now it actually literally is self-supporting, and that's the first step to a healthy community. A healthy relationship can stand on its own. It doesn't need to be fed by something, and I learned I think that's where I got this cancer was feeding so many people and so many things and trying to hold things up, and I gave myself away to the point where I didn't have any left, and so that's happening now. We have this subscriber situation, so you can pop in for three bucks a month and have access to all the subscriber episodes and I frankly would say it's worth it. That's where I'm sharing the rest of my journey to help the details of it.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm getting into topical things. We'll we'll be discussing all that on the outside, but um and and it creates a place for somebody to have a very raw and candid information or or podcast that's only shared with the people that support the show. So I think that's another level in in this new community that I've built. It's built on trust and love and and we have made ourselves vulnerable to each other in ways that you know my cannabis community never offered. It was always fraught with skullduggery and divas and hurt feelings and harumph and all this bullshit and and and. Today we weep in front of each other and we, we bear our souls and we, we work to make ourselves better together and we raise each other. And we, we bear our souls and we, we work to make ourselves better together and we raise each other up. And it's so different from what what I've experienced before. And so that's the second way is to support the show by subscribing. And the third way, maybe the most important, is to share yourself, to become a, or maybe a guest multiple times.
Speaker 1:
And you know I didn't go to college. I've lived a dozen lives. In this one life I've been a pioneer, a seeker of knowledge, a willingness to try things. I'm pretty fearless and courageous. I've stepped into some difficult things willingly and knowingly, and I keep going. And now, with this battle, I know that I feel like I'm getting close to the end of it in the good way, and I feel like soon I'll be able to come out of the fire once again, forged again and able to carry more weight and do more good, and only this time. I now have a community that hears me and values my experience, and I'm so looking forward to the things that I can do when I can take the energy from my own healing and share it with everybody else.
Speaker 1:
And what I've learned through the years is as a teacher I realized that you can learn things and learn things and learn things. But when you really get it, it happens. When you teach somebody else, when you have to share the information and communicate it, it changes the way it sits in your brain. It changes the way you go from sort of getting it or believing a thing or knowing it to completely getting it, to where now it's part of your fabric and you don't have to stop and check your notes and you don't have to worry about did I say the right words? And all this thing. You go and teach a thing and all of a sudden you just speak it. It's like the musician who just knows how to play the music, as opposed to the guy who's practicing and learning.
Speaker 1:
And so if you're interested in being a guest, you know, as you're looking at this, you'll realize that the range of topics and hosts and guests are just so wide. Anything that's connected to health, I said let's put it out there and put it into the mix, and the more information we have, the more the truth has the ability to be sifted out. And you know, I've rejected some guests, people that had agendas that I just didn't think belonged here or really wasn't about health. But most of the time, if we can find a way to tie it together, let's bring it in. Maybe your experience will help somebody else, or maybe sharing your experience will help yourself. Sometimes, saying things out loud that we've thought about or read about or whatnot, and having that conversation out loud brings it to life, and so that's what this podcast is all about.
Speaker 1:
I hope this has been informative, I hope you find it interesting and I definitely welcome any feedback. In this process I have been beaten to shit. I don't have a whole lot to offer but my words and thoughts, and right now I've never been in a more vulnerable spot in my life. But it's okay. There's something really freeing about surrendering and I don't talk about, you know, my spirituality much, my spirituality much. But through all of this journey I have become closer and closer to my Creator and I do realize that all these things that I'm doing are guided and supported and that this is my work, and I appreciate everybody who's come to join and be a part of this, and I just hope that it can make your life richer, all right, thank you. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and I thank you for your support.
